Friday, September 22, 2006

What You Get for Marriage Equality, 3 of 3

III. The Miscellaneous and Intangible1--Give more gays a greater stake in society. Coupling up and making a home is important to most all humans, but, for gays, the natural path to that joy is made complicated, unworkably so for many. Those who have committed marriages and family often put their kids and their caretaker above every other want, above even their self-preservation. They go to work and work hard for their family, even to jobs they can’t stand. Making this basic human need and motivation more difficult for such people, often damages them, and decreases their productivity. Simply, the more difficult it's made for a person to gain a stake in society, the more damage done to society.

2--Stop the whining, and waste. “Pride” events, all those speeches and platitudes on both sides, all the campaign $ spent? What a waste. Wouldn’t it be great to be gay in the same way one is a brunet? How much time have I spent writing on this? But the conflict has to find a conclusion, particularly as the gay baby boom makes it way through the schools. The choice will be to make it a non-issue or a huge issue, as everyone had to deal with their friends or family members who are either gay or with gay couples as parents in their genealogy. Such people won't stop fighting for equal treatment under the law for their families, no human group would. The waste will simply continue until either draconian measures are put in place and there are no more of our families, or equal rights are given. But the non-issue costs less in time, money, and ethics.

3--Uphold our cultural values. It’s very odd to me that one side of this fight will go on and on about morals and moral relativism, while the other seems timid in comparison. The Judeo-Christian values I was raised on and treasure are fuelling both sides of this fight; gays would otherwise be nowhere. There is no steady state with the present popular ethics on this issue. It’s the “no gay relationships” norm vs. the “freedom, justice, equality, empathy, Golden Rule” norms, and they will all fall into a stable order, as other moral quandaries have. No judge or politician can stop it, only slow it. In fact, if the Massachusetts Constitution didn’t have equal rights, regardless of a citizen’s sex, spelled out in it, put there by the people, there would likely be no gay marriage in the US at all. If the any US state wants to demote that ideal for another, make an exception, they can and will by ballot, and there is nothing gays can do to stop them. We are, again, at the feet of the masses, and can only hope and do our best.

Society will simply go as far as it wants, even overboard. It’s hard to predict. Children could be taken from their homes and “reeducated” by the government. Gays could be sought out and jailed. Gays could even be treated as if we had shariah law. Or equal treatment could be given for our families. Who knows? But I don't think the politics can remain static here; something must give. I’m clearly betting, hoping, on one set of morals, and I’m actually quite optimistic. Still, we’ll see.

I think santorio is absolutely right... and it's why I feel most discriminated against as a Mormon and not as a gay. I hang out with the 20-something crowd, and I love the open-mindedness until it reveals itself for some to be only close-mindedness at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Santorio, I shouldn’t of left it sounding so pessimistic. I also think things will sort out the way I hope, but there are still concerns. First, where I live, each legislative session we see attempts to whittle away the legal abilities we currently have; last session, for example, a bill was passed to take parental rights and responsibilities from many of our families, stopped only by a veto from the governor. I also worry, in troubled times, there’s a strong human habit of finding scapegoats and gays have, historically, been good for that. If times get tough for the US, for any number of reasons, all bets could be off as to where the politics could go.